MOTORCYCLES will be able to travel in bus lanes on Hoddle Street for six months under a trial to begin within weeks.

The Bus Association and Bicycle Network Victoria both oppose the plan but Roads Minister Terry Mulder said the trial would assess ''travel times and other benefits for motorcycles and determine if there are any impacts on buses and other road users''.

Under the trial, motorcyclists will be able to ride in the southbound Hoddle Street bus lane between the Eastern Freeway and Victoria Parade.

VicRoads chose Hoddle Street because of the number of road users, the length of the bus lane and the level of congestion during peak hours.

Mr Mulder said information from the trial ''along with community feedback, will be used to make an evidence-based decision on whether to allow motorcycles to use bus lanes''.

''Broadly we are very much supporting the concept because it has been very successful overseas,'' he said. Motorcycles using bus lanes ''frees up congestion on the main roads''.

But Bicycle Network Victoria spokesman Garry Brennan said motorcycles should not use bus lanes because of the speed at which they travelled.

Cyclists are permitted to use bus lanes in signposted areas on Hoddle Street and Mr Brennan said they expected more bus lanes to be opened to cyclists.

''It is inevitable,'' he said. ''The evidence from around Australia and around the world is that buses and bikes can successfully share bike lanes.''

Chris Lowe from the Bus Association said it did not support motorcycles or bicycles using bus lanes.

''The three modes of transport are inherently different and we are very concerned at the prospect of two-wheeled motorised and non-motorised forms of transport sharing road space with a heavy vehicle,'' he said.

RACV general manager public policy Brian Negus said bus lanes should only be used by buses, taxis and commercial hire cars.

VICTORIAN Public Transport Minister Terry Mulder has rejected advice from within his own departments to give crucial bus services to Melbourne's east a better run in the afternoon peak - in part because the plan would have forced a cut to on-street parking.

Documents released to The Age under freedom-of-information laws have revealed that the minister ditched a plan by VicRoads and the former Department of Transport to extend clearway times for outbound buses along Victoria Parade and Hoddle Street.

The proposal, put to Mr Mulder in February, was expected to have saved commuters eight minutes a day on average.Advertisement: Story continues below

Studies found the buses took between five and 23 minutes to traverse the two major roads, depending on traffic. It was proposed to give buses a dedicated lane between 4pm and 7pm; 165 parking spaces and six trees would have been lost.

The rejected ministerial briefing states that ''VicRoads has satisfied itself that the clearways and bus lane proposal will provide major benefit to buses, will not negatively impact upon pedestrian or cyclist safety, will not degrade the local environment and that there is adequate alternative parking available''.

Mr Mulder told The Age: ''Hoddle Street and Victoria Parade are very busy roads where the needs of all road users must be balanced.''

The buses provide the only direct public transport to the north-eastern suburbs.

Plans to build a railway line to Doncaster date back to the 1960s but no state government has committed to it, although a $6.5 million feasibility study is under way.

The so-called DART (Doncaster Area Rapid Transit) network was launched in late 2010, with four bus routes given priority in-bound lanes and more regular services. In its first nine months DART bus patronage leapt more than 30 per cent to 10,700 passengers each weekday. But outbound priority lanes were not created along Victoria Parade and Hoddle Street, although they are on the Eastern Freeway and in Lonsdale Street.

Monash University public transport expert Graham Currie, who assisted the departments in their research, said outbound traffic on those two roads was holding up buses immensely.

''If you get the morning peak working that's fine, people can get into town reasonably well,'' Professor Currie said. ''But they want also to go home, and if they get stuck in the afternoon they'll make a decision to drive in the morning.''

Extended peak-hour clearway times were a contentious issue at the last state election, and the Baillieu government has wound back many that were introduced by Labor.

Traders and inner-city councils opposed the extensions, arguing they hurt retail, but road-user group the RACV backed them.

Ten traders opposed the DART priority lane plan last year, as did the City of Yarra, which called for the bus lane to be installed at the expense of a lane of traffic, not parking.

Bus Association executive director Chris Lowe said the bus lanes' benefits would outweigh the negative impact on traders and residents using the parking spaces.

THE myki ticket system will be used to implement a new carrot-and-stick ''performance regime'' for Melbourne's bus network in a bid to boost passenger numbers and punctuality.

With the city's population continuing to swell - particularly at its fringes - the state government is set to announce a shake-up of the network as it moves to lift bus patronage.

A short-list of companies competing for a lucrative worldwide tender to run one-third of the network is set to be announced this week. In the biggest single bus tender, the overhaul will involve 56 routes worth $150 million annually, with five companies to be replaced by a single operator from next year.

Briefing documents by Public Transport Victoria reveal that the troubled myki system, a GPS tracking system and other technologies will be used to monitor the performance of the new operator, with penalties for lateness and bonuses for good performance.Advertisement

Treasurer Kim Wells, who is overseeing the process, said there had been ''strong interest'' from local, interstate and global transport providers. He said the government wanted to introduce financial incentives to boost passenger numbers and punctuality.

''We are seeking to make the new contracts incentive-based to encourage patronage growth and increase the reliability and service punctuality of Melbourne's bus network,'' Mr Wells said.

The new contract is also likely to force the operator to stick to a ''customer charter'' outlining minimum service standards for passengers.

It follows concerns that existing operators have faced little scrutiny since the privatisation of the network in the mid-1990s.

Public Transport Users Association president Daniel Bowen said there was very little monitoring of bus punctuality and reliability.

Mr Bowen said there was also a need for more direct routes, more frequent services and better co-ordination with train and tram services.

A report by the association found that the bus network is beset by problems, with low patronage, haphazard scheduling and inefficient routes. The report shows Melbourne's buses carry half as many passengers per kilometre travelled as Sydney, and one-third as many as Brisbane.

It also shows taxpayer-funded subsidies are relatively high, with the public spending $4.95 for each bus trip in Melbourne, compared with $3.65 for train trips and $1.94 for trams.

A PLAN to hand control of almost a third of Melbourne's bus routes to one company has sparked fears that an aggressive bidding war could hit service standards and damage the industry.

Public Transport Victoria will appoint a single operator next year to run 30 per cent of the city's bus network - including the four heavily used Doncaster rapid-bus routes and three growing orbital routes that ring the middle and outer suburbs.

A shortlist of five contenders for the contract includes three multinational companies, one from interstate and just one Victorian operator, sparking fears among established companies that decades of local knowledge could be lost and that a previous failed experiment of bringing in an outside operator stands to be repeated.

In 1998 under the Kennett government, many of Melbourne's bus routes were privatised and handed to British company National Express, only for it to walk away five years later with its Melbourne operation in a state of financial collapse.

The privatisation of government bus routes was overseen by then-public transport head Ian Dobbs, who last year returned to Victoria from Britain after being appointed chief executive of Public Transport Victoria, the Baillieu government's new statutory body.

Mr Dobbs is also driving the current overhaul of Melbourne's buses, which he has said will ''result in a value-for-money outcome and deliver improved bus services for passengers''.

But Chris Lowe, the head of industry body Bus Association Victoria, warned that the strategy to bolster Melbourne's bus services had been tried and failed before, because the successful bidder underquoted and quickly suffered cost blowouts that resulted in cutbacks.

''We've seen non-local operators awarded major bus contracts in Victoria before - and they've failed,'' Mr Lowe said. ''The withdrawal of National Express from Victoria in 2003 showed what happens when companies aggressively bid for local contracts, so we hope Victoria doesn't make the same mistake twice.''

Mr Lowe said the same circumstances were causing grief for bus passengers in Adelaide, where multinational operator Transfield won control of almost half of the city's bus routes, but has come under harsh criticism over falling service standards.

''There's nothing an international operator can do that a local bus operator can't do,'' he said. ''Local knowledge can't be bought over the term of a seven-year franchise, it is learnt over generations.''

But a spokesman for Public Transport Victoria said the bus franchise tender process would include ''a rigorous assessment of financial sustainability''.

The three international bidders are Keolis Downer Rail, which also runs Yarra Trams, Veolia, which formerly ran Melbourne's trains as Connex, and British operator First Transit.

Australian candidates are Transit Systems and the National Bus Company (Ventura), which runs 80 per cent of the routes being tendered.

More than three years after it began, the high-frequency public bus to Melbourne Airport has not dented the overwhelming dominance of car travel at Tullamarine, even as it has bloomed into one of Melbourne's most popular bus services elsewhere on its route.

The route 901 SmartBus - which departs the airport every 15 minutes, travelling to Broadmeadows railway station and ultimately to Frankston on a 4½⁄-hour, 115-kilometre journey - has the second highest patronage of any bus route in Melbourne, carrying 15,000 passengers each weekday. Its passengers say it provides reliable cross-town public transport in the outer suburbs ...

Negative people... have a problem for every solution.Posts are commentary and are not necessarily endorsed by RAIL Back on Track or its members. Not affiliated with, paid by or in conspiracy with MTR/Metro.

A network of more than 30 bus routes running every 10 minutes would criss-cross much of Melbourne within less than a decade under ambitious plans produced by Public Transport Victoria.

The state's public transport authority wants to drastically boost bus services in the suburbs, particularly the outer growth areas, to keep pace with Melbourne's rapid population growth and sprawl.

Under the plan, Melbourne would have 35 so-called ''SmartBus'' routes by 2021, running every 10 minutes along direct routes between busy urban hubs such as shopping centres and railway stations. There are currently nine SmartBus routes in Melbourne that run at 15-minute frequencies, including four between the city and Doncaster and three that orbit the middle and outer suburbs.

New turn-up-and-go routes would be introduced between Werribee and Melbourne Airport, Moonee Ponds and Melbourne Airport, Caroline Springs and Brighton Beach, and Elwood and La Trobe University, to name a few. Some existing routes that run every half-hour would be boosted to 10-minute frequencies, and several new SmartBus routes would be launched in the outer suburbs ...

This morning's 318 was dangerously full with people (self included) in the front doorway over the yellow line. That was after I didn't get on a similarly full 906.

A route to keep an eye on..the 906 (pic below)...and transdev/ptvs ability to handle overcrowding issues.They added 1 measly extra service but how many extra pasengers are now catching the service after reshuffling/merging duplicating routes? Classic case of "oh crap,we underestimated this guys"

I understand they have basically cut services in some areas and will be reintroducing them later in different form (eg the 906 is apparently going to 10 minute frequency). Not sure why this has been staggered out. Reports are that it has been handled a bit ineptly with a lot of timetables still not updated out at stops, and some bungled installations where it has been attended to.

The problem with our bus services is that the suburban environment around these bus routes are not well designed for people to use public transport. Melbourne's outer suburbs are designed for people using cars not buses. Until they increase density around central hubs and improve amenity for pedestrians and bikes the buses will remain empty. If you look carefully at the video you can see the buses are driving along virtually empty or low density streets with little activity.

One example from experience is Point Cook were it is quite difficult to walk over from the residential area into the so called town centre. The bus services skirt the shopping centre but make it difficult to make direct connections between the outlying residential areas and the commercial areas. Pedestrian amenity is important because it allows people to walk from there houses to the bus stops. Density also needs to increase to get the raw numbers to justify frequent bus services, this is also a problem in places like point cook because the residential density is all the same (single family dwellings).

... The three orbital bus routes that ring the outer suburbs and run every 15 minutes will be split into seven shorter runs, with some routes in the outer east and south getting a bus every 7½ to 10 minutes but services in the north and west stripped back to every 20 or 30 minutes ...

There are changes planned to occur in the Bayside, Brimbank, Manningham, Maribyrnong and Whitehorse areas in 2015, with smaller changes to occur across other Melbourne council areas.

We have prepared information about these proposed changes below and invite you to provide your feedback by completing an online survey after you have read through the changes.

The survey will be open from Monday 1 December until Monday 22 December 2014.

Why is a new network proposed for these areas?

As part of our contractual commitment to PTV and to continue to provide good service to our customers, Transdev regularly reviews the services we provide with the aim of creating a better network that is more suited to modern demands. This includes more high frequency routes that run over a longer time span, fed by connector and local routes that serve local areas and link to the high frequency network.

The 2015 changes build on the changes already introduced in July 2014. Most routes that changed in July 2014 will remain unchanged in 2015, other than the adjustment of timetables to improve punctuality and connectivity ...

Labor Backs Investment In Better Bus Services And Community Consultation

Tuesday 14 April 2015

The Andrews Labor Government will not proceed with proposals to radically change metropolitan bus services outlined in recent media reports.

Minister for Public Transport, Jacinta Allan, said the changes proposed by bus operator Transdev were inconsistent with the Andrews Labor Government’s focus on better bus services across metropolitan Melbourne based on community consultation.

The proposed bus network changes involve cutting services in Melbourne’s north and west, some by more than 20 per cent, in favour of service improvements in the eastern and southern suburbs.

Buses, including Smartbus services, play an important role in connecting people to jobs, education and other modes of transport. Cutting buses, particularly without proper consultation, would leave people isolated and without access to the services they plan their lives around.

Rather than proceeding with the suggested changes, the Andrews Labor Government will direct PTV and Transdev to develop a more balanced bus network proposal in consultation with local communities.

Consultation and investment is at the centre of Labor’s Plan for Victoria’s Bus Network, which the Government took to last year’s election.

The Andrews Labor Government will establish a Ministerial consultative group and new transport forums based around local government areas. These bodies will look at ways to expand and improve public transport, including buses.

In addition, Labor’s $100 million bus plan sets out improvements to specific bus routes, and outlines a range of other measures to make Melbourne’s buses better.

Quotes attributable to Minister for Public Transport, Jacinta Allan

“Demand for buses is growing faster than any other mode of transport, and we need to make sure they continue to meet the needs of our community.”

“Rather than cutting buses in one area to increase buses in another, the Andrews Labor Government will develop a more balanced bus network plan in consultation with the community.”

There are more than 300 public bus routes in Melbourne, run by 12 operators under 28 contracts. All of those contracts, with the exception of Transdev's, were renewed in 2008 with long-standing operators without going to competitive tender. This process was the subject of a previous, critical report by the auditor-general.

There are a lot of bus companies it seems, but this in itself is not a cause for concern in itself. It just means that there are a lot of suppliers. Operators that receive a public subsidy ideally should have a competitive contract.

Negative people... have a problem for every solution.Posts are commentary and are not necessarily endorsed by RAIL Back on Track or its members. Not affiliated with, paid by or in conspiracy with MTR/Metro.

Negative people... have a problem for every solution.Posts are commentary and are not necessarily endorsed by RAIL Back on Track or its members. Not affiliated with, paid by or in conspiracy with MTR/Metro.